English Majors

GK: ---after a word from the Professional Organization of English Majors.

With college tuition on the rise, parents are pushing their kids to choose a major that leads to a paying job, such as electrical engineering or applied math or computer science –---- but studies show that by the time you graduate, most of those high-tech jobs are going to be run by androids, the artificially intelligent machines those science and math majors designed. (COMPUTER BEEPING, LASER) Technology changes so rapidly. Today you have a paying job as a computer programmer and tomorrow you’re working at a bowling alley, sterilizing the shoes.

TR: I majored in mathematics and I was designing software and I was all right for a couple years and then they introduced a new system and I was lost. My education was obsolete. Now I’m herding sheep in Montana. (SHEEP) I wish I’d done what I wanted to do and majored in English.

GK: Yes, studies show that the English language is here to stay and that majoring in English is a smart investment.

SS: My sister went to law school. She got straight A’s, went to work in a big firm, burned out in three years, and now she’s picking peaches and living in the back seat of her car. I majored in English and I have a lucrative business writing resumes for people who lost their high-tech jobs and are looking for employment.

GK: That’s why more and more college students are saying----

SS: Make mine English.

GK: Now with growing opportunities in the rewarding field of fiction.

TR: Her slender fingers played across his bare skin like meadowlarks flitting from branch to branch as she whispered her tender affections and the boat drifted with the current under the spreading hemlocks.

Lovingly selected from the earliest archives of A Prairie Home Companion, this heirloom collection represents the music from earliest years of the now legendary show: 1974–1976. With songs and tunes from jazz pianist Butch Thompson, mandolin maestro Peter Ostroushko, Dakota Dave Hull and the first house band, The Powdermilk Biscuit Band (Adam Granger, Bob Douglas and Mary DuShane).